From Real Space to Cyberspace: Contemporary Conversations about the Archaeology of Slavery and Tenancy

Abstract

This paper will describe the Levi Jordan Plantation web project http://www.webarchaeology.com/ in which interactivity is seen as more than just providing web site visitors with buttons, sound bites and video clips, and multivocality as more than the passive presentation of "diverse pasts". Collaborators (including archaeologists and descendant community members) are attempting to use web site content as well as various on-line mechanisms to promote conversations about the past between archaeologists and the public, and between members of the public with each other. This paper will describe the specific strategies being used, and will comment on the theoretical, epistemological, and practical challenges that archaeologists face in this new communicative environment.

Keywords

• archaeology
• slavery
• tenancy
• website
• interactivity
• community
• Levi Jordan Plantation
• reflexivity
• multivocality
• contextuality